Just chill, juice cos whip up the tempo this summer

Fruit juice chase has gathered a wild momentum. As the market gets crowded, there's an unprecedented rush for innovation, fuelled by close to 20 new entrants - big and small - during the past year. Almost all seem to be in a hurry to dish out something new to tickle the consumer palate. Those who have stayed clear of product innovations, have created a stir in other parameters such as pricing.

Market leader, Dabur welcomed this summer with three flavours in its summer drinks brand, Coolers, while retaining the familiar Ampanna. These include, lemon-barley, watermelon-mint and rose-litchi. Delhi-based Rittel Impex has launched Coco juices in apple-banana and honey-lemon flavours.

Seabuckthorn Indage has launched apple-peach, pineapple-apple and blackcurrent flavours with seabuckthorn fruit as the base, which has medicinal and stress relieving properties.

Manipur-based, Exotic Juices has introduced, Passip, a passion fruit drink, which will enter north India shortly. Pepsi was slated to launch several new Tropicana variants this season; they are yet to hit the shelves. Pepsi had earlier launched fruit fusion, nectars and guava flavour of Tropicana juices, apart from the existing mango and litchi flavours.

Rasna, while resorting to its traditional stance with the recently-launched Juc-Fit has created a stir with Rs 45 a litre price against Rs 75 a litre from those of the big rivals. “We want to make fruit juices an everyday consumption item for the people and take more mass,” says Piruz Khambata, CEO, Rasna.

Mr Khambata says, Rasna has taken a cue from China's experience with a dollar a litre pricing, which exploded the market.